"Bologna, August 24. 1819.
"I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for
publication, addressed to the buffoon R----ts, who has thought
proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It was written off-hand,
and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to
facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than
enough for that sort of small acid punch:--you will tell me.
"Keep the anonymous, in any case: it helps what fun there may be.
But if the matter grow serious about _Don Juan_, and you feel
_yourself_ in a scrape, or _me_ either, _own that I am the author._
_I_ will never _shrink_; and if _you_ do, I can always answer you
in the question of Guatimozin to his minister--each being on his
own coals.[46]
"I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of sorts,
out of nerves, and now and then (I begin to fear) out of my senses.
All this Italy has done for me, and not England: I defy all you,
and your climate to boot, to make me mad. But if ever I do really
become a bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought
back among you; your people will then be proper company.
"I assure you what I here say and feel has nothing to do with
England, either in a literary or personal point of view. All my
present pleasures or plagues are as Italian as the opera. And after
all, they are but trifles; for all this arises from my 'Dama's'
being in the country for three days (at Capo-fiume). But as I could
never live but for one human being at a time, (and, I assure you,
_that one_ has never been _myself_, as you may know by the
consequences, for the _selfish_ are _successful_ in life,) I feel
alone and unhappy.
"I have sent for my daughter from Venice, and I ride daily, and
walk in a garden, under a purple canopy of grapes, and sit by a
fountain, and talk with the gardener of his tools, which seem
greater than Adam's, and with his wife, and with his son's wife,
who is the youngest of the party, and, I think, talks best of the
three. Then I revisit the Campo Santo, and my old friend, the
sexton, has two--but _one_ the prettiest daughter imaginable; and I
amuse myself with contrasting her beautiful and innocent face of
fifteen with the skulls with which he has peopled several cells,
and particularly with that of one skull dated 1766, which was once
covered (the tradition goes) by the most lovely features of
Bologna--noble and rich. When I look at these, and at this
girl--when I think of what _they were_, and what she must be--why,
then, my dear Murray, I won't shock you by saying what I think. It
is little matter what becomes of us 'bearded men,' but I don't like
the notion of a beautiful woman's lasting less than a beautiful
tree--than her own picture--her own shadow, which won't change so
to the sun as her face to the mirror. I must leave off, for my head
aches consumedly. I have never been quite well since the night of
the representation of Alfieri's Mirra, a fortnight ago. Yours
ever."
[Footnote 46:
"Am I now reposing on a bed of flowers?"